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The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

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Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#531

Post by int_19h »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #244
jwr wrote: post #20

This is a very good take on the subject. I love the iPad, I use it all the time. It's an unbelievably good piece of hardware with a number of really good software applications. It is a surprisingly good thinking and note-taking tool, it's the best tool (period) for reading datasheets (or any large PDF documents), it is a great music workstation if you connect a MIDI keyboard and/or an external USB audio interface. Bu…

> The worst thing is that the forced over-simplification of the UI features did not make it easier to use for beginners. I can see many people (including myself) struggling. So we have been forced into a "compromise" with all the downside, but none of the upside. I wholly disagree, at least at the beginning. When the original iPad was released, I remember seeing multiple viral videos of two-year-olds being given iPad…

Side note: the physical Home button that brought the device into a well-defined state was a godsend for new users. I observed this with both my parents and my grandparents: whenever they got "lost" somewhere, the fact that they could always press that button (and don't have to look for it! it's always in the same place, it's not auto-hide etc) and get to a familiar place, made things a lot easier. Oftentimes they'd use it in lieu of other, faster ways of getting from here to there - but I figured it's more important that they can get there.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#532

Post by int_19h »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #469
ashonalla wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Considering that command-Z is not discoverable Traditionally, the keyboard shortcut for undo has been listed next to undo on the edit menu. That's pretty discoverable...

And it's brilliant . Ever time you manually click edit → undo, you'll see the shortcut. It’s not invasive—it’s not some big popup that takes over the screen, or even a neon-colored tooltip that commands your attention—it’s just there , in the background, in case you happen to notice it. Maybe you’re not sure what it means at first, but if you keep seeing it every day, you just might try hitting the sequence of keys a…

I really miss the consistency of CUA and its derivatives (the original Mac and Windows desktop UX). It may have not been the most ergonomic, but it was extremely discoverable thanks to the menus, and it was very consistent: you only had to learn a few simple principles, and then apply them everywhere - and it scaled nicely from Notepad to Excel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#533

Post by Cixelyn »

eugeniub wrote: post #524
hug wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Late to the party, but the answer is almost certainly just ProCreate. ProCreate (according to my girlfriend, who has a degree in illustration) is absolutely second to none with regards to completely eliminating the friction from digital painting. The toolset & UI/UX feel like someone who had used Photoshop with a Wacom tablet for 10 years took everything they liked about interacting with Photoshop and got it right, a…

This doesn’t explain why people are using either iPad Pro or Wacom + Photoshop but eschewing Surface + Photoshop.

According to our creative director, the Surface’s digitizer is significantly worse than the Wacom one. iirc the first generation Surface licensed Wacom technologies, but in subsequent generations Microsoft switched to their in-house nTrig which they got through an acquisition.

In fact the Wacom is better by a large large enough margin that she’s willing to forgo using the (reasonably well-designed) Surface for the bastard child of a laptop that is the Wacom Cintiq Mobile Studio Pro 13.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#534

Post by jodrellblank »

sirn wrote: post #513
mdorazio wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why iPad Pro and not Surface, which from my (admittedly limited) use has always had digitizer responsiveness and functionality at the same level, with the benefit of also being a computer with all the normal software workflow and hotkeys.

Surface Pro as of few years ago has a horrible jitter and much larger latency than iPad or Wacom tablets (search for Surface Pro jitter should yield plenty of examples). It has gotten better in the past few generations and with better stablization in software updates, but many artists I know still avoid N-Trig pen. Wacom has MobileStudio that runs Windows, but it also come with heating issues.

Bit of a shame, since the Surface Pro original had a Wacom digitizer. It was v2 they switched to N-Trig and v2 or v3 they had Penny Arcade publicising how bad it was.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#535

Post by rcarmo »

Firaxus wrote: post #319
Fiahil wrote: post #269

I completely agree with this article. The iPad hardware is absolutely wonderful, it's light, gorgeous and powerful. I got the latest iPad pro to watch Netflix in bed and it fills that purpose completely. However, the OS running on the machine is bad. Very bad. The multitasking is horrifying. The Files app is unusable (especially if you want to access your files from an FTP server). You have to use your finger to sele…

Consider looking into iSH, it let's you access a Linux like environment where you can download and use common packages like vim and python in a terminal. It has to emulate x86 calls, but for my use case of writing notes in vim and compiling and running simple c++ programs, it works. You can see some more information here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ish/ But I completely agree that it's practically a moral crime that th…

It doesn’t support MMX emulation, which means I can’t get a Go compiler to run on it at the moment.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#536

Post by unixfg »

enneff wrote: post #493
jarjoura wrote: post #480

As someone who worked on the iPad v1, I can tell you, it was a product built in search of a problem. It was going to compete against the, then, growing Netbook market. Steve Jobs thought Windows was going to win that market and hastily threw a team together to answer for it. However, during several all-hands, no one except SJ seemed even remotely excited about the product. "These things will probably sell in the educ…

I was excited when the iPad was first released, bought one, and to my surprise I found I didn't have any regular use for it, and sold it. I still think they're very cool devices—in particular the latest iPad Pros are gorgeous—I just wish I had some use for them that wasn't already covered by my computer, phone, or TV.

I've seriously considered making my iPad my only mobile device. The lines are blurred by having a large phone, though.

The 11" is so great for reading, my poor kindle only gets attention when I see the big dead battery image on it :(

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#537

Post by freepor »

jarjoura wrote: post #480

As someone who worked on the iPad v1, I can tell you, it was a product built in search of a problem. It was going to compete against the, then, growing Netbook market. Steve Jobs thought Windows was going to win that market and hastily threw a team together to answer for it. However, during several all-hands, no one except SJ seemed even remotely excited about the product. "These things will probably sell in the educ…

Amazing how much better vision Jobs had than anyone. From your comment looks like the entire senior team at Apple were nonbelievers.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#538

Post by freepor »

Descon wrote: post #521
TheKarateKid wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Developers will always surprise us, they will come up with use cases for us." Well, they did. iPads are now replacing POS registers and kiosks. Although a part of me dies when I see iPad Pros being used for this, because it’s so powerful and capable yet being used as a big touch monitor.

We have an iPad pro at work & a piece of me dies thinking that such a powerful device will never run anything but iOS.

You realize that one of the reasons the device feels so powerful is that it runs iOS. A 5x specified Mac Pro doesn’t have the feel of the iPad.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#539

Post by simonh »

int_19h wrote: post #530
simonh wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you’d be running unsigned, unreviewed binaries bypassing iOS controls directly on the CPU, which would be a security nightmare for iOS. This way it’s a completely emulated environment that’s isolated from the underlying system.

Millions of people use Android devices that allow sideloading, and it does not end up a "security nightmare".

Oh come on, security and privacy on Android barely exist at all except at the most general level. We're past the days when Samsung disabled all OS security controls on their flagship phone just to get the camera working for launch day, but Play Store apps are so infested with spyware and trackers the security of sideloaded apps is barely relevant.

Re: The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

#540

Post by Fiahil »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #472
Fiahil wrote: post #269

I completely agree with this article. The iPad hardware is absolutely wonderful, it's light, gorgeous and powerful. I got the latest iPad pro to watch Netflix in bed and it fills that purpose completely. However, the OS running on the machine is bad. Very bad. The multitasking is horrifying. The Files app is unusable (especially if you want to access your files from an FTP server). You have to use your finger to sele…

>PS: even having a console-only ubuntu VM would make me happy at this point. If you're ok with that console running on a home Ubuntu workstation/server or cloud server, then the Blink.sh iOS app is great for this. ssh into your Ubuntu workstation/server from your iPad. Discussed at HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12932592

I'm using blink, it's the best alternative currently. It's just sad to have a powerful 2k€ machine, but working on a 10€ raspberry pi.
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